I may just mention here that Mrs. Hemans was allowed to retire gradually, till at last she was to be found only in the more inaccessible recesses of the library-shelves; while by that time Harry might be heard, not all over the house, certainly, but as far off as outside the closed door of the library, reading aloud to himself one or other of Macaulay’s ballads, with an evident enjoyment of the go in it. A story with drum and trumpet accompaniment was quite enough, for the present, to satisfy Harry; and Macaulay could give him that, if little more.
As they went across the lawn towards the shrubbery, on their way to look for larches and Spring, Euphra joined them in walking dress. It was a lovely morning.
“I have taken you at your word, you see, Mr. Sutherland,” said she. “I don’t want to lose my Harry quite.”
“You dear kind Euphra!” said Harry, going round to her side and taking her hand. He did not stay long with her, however, nor did Euphra seem particularly to want him.
“There was one thing I ought to have mentioned to you the other night, Mr. Sutherland; and I daresay I should have mentioned it, had not Mr. Arnold interrupted our tête-à-tête. I feel now as if I had been guilty of claiming far more than I have a right to, on the score of musical insight. I have Scotch blood in me, and was indeed born in Scotland, though I left it before I was a year old. My mother, Mr. Arnold’s sister, married a gentleman who was half Sootch; and I was born while they were on a visit to his relatives, the Camerons of Lochnie. His mother, my grandmother, was a Bohemian lady, a countess with sixteen quarterings—not a gipsy, I beg to say.”
Hugh thought she might have been, to judge from present appearances.
But how was he to account for this torrent of genealogical information, into which the ice of her late constraint had suddenly thawed? It was odd that she should all at once volunteer so much about herself. Perhaps she had made up one of those minds which need making up, every now and then, like a monthly magazine; and now was prepared to publish it. Hugh responded with a question:
“Do I know your name, then, at last? You are Miss Cameron?”
“Euphrasia Cameron; at your service, sir.” And she dropped a gay little courtesy to Hugh, looking up at him with a flash of her black diamonds.
“Then you must sing to me to-night.”